Last week newly-appointed Transport Minister Dinh La Thang made the headlines with bold statements about dealing with traffic jams in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi - the country’s largest cities.

He promoted public transport, appealing for officials to take the bus at least once a week to set a good example. He also claimed that he himself had traveled by public bus incognito to inspect their services, and concluded that their quality generally met the public’s demands.

Some are interested in Thang’s statements, expressing hopes that his determination will help Vietnam deal with worsening traffic problems.

However, the country’s traffic saga isn’t about congestion only.

Those who travel the central region, which is hit by tens of typhoons and floods per year, know full well that after every rain, some of our mountainous roads fall apart, completely. It can take people several hours to travel 100 kilometers by car sometimes.

Transport officials once blamed this on the region’s harsh weather conditions, and to the fact that its main streets are currently overloaded with a huge number of trucks with excessive loads.

But, there is another reason why the quality of our streets deteriorates so quickly. It is a problem that officials recognize so rarely that it leads one to believe that they do not want to even notice the issue: the carelessness of construction work on our national traffic infrastructure projects.

In Quang Ngai Province, for example, Civil Engineering Construction Joint-Stock Company No.512, the contractor repairing a section on the National Way 1A, has recently been found ordering workers to lay asphalt while it rains.

While it is against standard practices to do asphalting on wet streets with stagnant water, the contractor still went on with its work, and in response to questions from the press, Pham The Viet, chief of the asphalting team, said they had to continue, or they would lose VND6 million (US$287) for five tons of asphalt that was already prepared before the rain.

“It was just a light rain, so it won’t have any influence,” he said when asked if the practice would affect the work’s quality.

Perhaps the influence of this problematic practice won’t be seen in the immediate future, but the picture will become clearer after typhoons, heavy rains and floods. However, when that happens, it is the people, not the contractors, that will suffer the consequences of such carelessness and irresponsibility.

Therefore, while people are waiting for the results of transport leaders’ bold measures to curb traffic jams in big cities, they are also hoping that the boldness will be revealed as the leaders cope with bad practices by contractors on major traffic infrastructure projects.